‘Law Deans Are Running Bait and Switch Operation’

…In Australia.

Yes folks, y’all can add Down Under to the list of countries with too many law students chasing too few legal jobs, according to a surprisingly scathing opinion piece in The Australian Financial Review by a law instructor at Macquarie University.

A few quotes:

“Law student numbers are out of hand. Nearly 15,000 finish their degree each year, and enter a market where there are only 66,000 solicitors.” Yikes.

“Law deans are running a bait and switch operation. They hold out the promise of a legal career, while adding to the unemployment queue.”

Finally:

“[The deans’] claim that the legal problems undertaken in law tutorials are a platform for a generalist degree – that will see students who miss out on a job as a lawyer well placed to enter other high-paid spheres of the economy – is a self-serving myth.”

All this is just more evidence that American legal education does a better job of training law deans to advocate their positions than other countries do. The best they can offer here is the versatile-law-degree argument, but if they want to avoid a government crackdown, they’ll have to lean on increasing diversity in the profession or at least gussy up what they have with some kind of human-capital analysis. Otherwise, these Southern Hemispherians will end up like their Japanese counterparts.